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Koreantoast writes "The United States military has deployed Raytheon's newly developed Active Denial System (ADS), a millimeter-wave, 'non-lethal' heat-ray, to Afghanistan. The weapon generates a 'burning sensation' that is supposedly harmless, with the military claiming that the chance of injury is at less than 0.1%; numerous volunteers including reporters over the last several years have experienced its effects during various trials and demonstrations. While US military spokesperson Lt. Col. John Dorrian states that the weapon has not yet been operationally used, the tense situation in theater will ensure its usage soon enough. Proponents of ADS believe the system may help limit civilian deaths in counterinsurgency operations and provide new, safer ways to disperse crowds and control riots, but opponents fear that the system's long-term effects are not fully known and that the device may even be used for torture. Regardless, if ADS is successful in the field, we'll probably see this mobile microwave at your next local protest or riot."

I don't know if you were serious or joking, but that might actually be a viable defense! A suit made out of, say, a couple of $2 metalized "space blankets", with eye holes covered by very fine (1mm or smaller mesh) metal screen. And ground straps on your shoes! Don't forget that. Those are readily available from industrial supply companies. All in all, it seems to me that if you shopped around you could work up an effective "Active Admission" (as opposed to "Denial") suit for under $20.

Either way, smoke 'em if you got 'em in your sights. I wonder what would happen if people at a protest suddenly come up with a large supply of sheet aluminum... you know, like stop signs etc... parabolic dish shapes might also be interesting.

Interesting point, as a line of sight area weapon with highly limited targeted ability, is it appropriate to torture innocent people in the background because you are targeted people in the foreground. Will it be child abuse when children are tortured by burning pain.

So a device that inflicts extreme pain and suffering, with no record of who it is aimed at and for what reason and all neatly wrapped up in it doesn't directly cause 'permanent harm' as such tough luck for collateral victims sitting quietly

There's a missing ingredient in that recipe: a grain of salt. For instance, it says there that this "protects against most RF and EMF based attacks, including:... Dielectric heating which causes cataracts". WTF? How can it protect your eyes, unless you wrap your head with the treated cloth?

Protection against unwanted electromagnetic fields is a technology called electromagnetic compatibility [wikipedia.org]. Unless you know what you are doing and use complex test equipment, results may not be what you expect.

The page looks well-written, but sentences like "It probably shields against remote activation of implants" make me kind of suspicious.

Fortunately, they seem to be giving good advice: "Covering yourself with tinfoil or Mylar, for example, is a great way to get noticed and stereotyped. [...] There are situations where it’s appropriate to bring others’ attention to the stalking-related events in your life. However, if you link every incident to a vast conspiracy against you, you’ll be percei

unfortunatly the chances of cameras catching you bursting into flames are slim.The chances or any cameras which do catch you bursting into flames not being confiscated for the sake of national security are even slimmer.

My years of playing AD&D taught me that most desert dwellers often have fire immunity, and that extends to side effects of fire and heat related effects, so I'm not sure this ray will be very effective over there.

You might mean it as a joke, but the Germans are a step ahead of you here -- anything that can serve to protect you against police violence in a protest has already been outlawed for the last twenty years as a "protective weapon" (the law is 17a of the Versammlungsgesetz).

They have outlawed padded clothing that protects against beatings, mouthguards that protect against police knocking your teeth out, masks that protect against teargas and ballistic vests that make it harder to maim you from a distance. Outlawing tin foil hats is the logical next step.

Isn't it kind of a big jump to go from "weapon of war" to "local cops can afford this?" I don't think the VA Beach or Norfolk police can afford much of anything that Raytheon sells. Of course, neither article mentions the price of this thing, but the general rule is "if you have to ask, you can't afford it." Of course, its not like Posse Comitatus means anything anymore, so maybe they'll just get a unit from the local military base to come out for the day and "adivse" them with it.

Stuff like this can be funded through DHS grants. It's true these are usually only six-figures so cities can buy trinkets, but I'm sure Raytheon can develop a "consumer version" that is a little cheaper so that every village with a population greater than 3 souls can have one.

It's been known for over fifty years that microwaves, at just a few milliwatts per square centimeter, cause cataracts. That's why there are rather tight limits on microwave exposure around radar and telecom equipment.

Spraying microwaves around and possibly inducing mass blindness is not going to look good in the history books.

Actually, if that happens there would be grounds for war crimes trials. Blinding the enemy is definitely a war crime. But then again, it's not like the US is really big on prosecuting their own war criminals, except when it's convenient.

Article 1 It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices. The High Contracting Parties shall not transfer such weapons to any State or non-State entity.

Article 2 In the employment of laser systems, the High Contracting Parties shall take all feasible precautions to avoid the incidence of permanent blindness to unenhanced vision. Such precautions shall include training of their armed forces and other practical measures.

Article 3 Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol.

Article 4 For the purpose of this protocol "permanent blindness" means irreversible and uncorrectable loss of vision which is seriously disabling with no prospect of recovery. Serious disability is equivalent to visual acuity of less than 20/200 Snellen measured using both eyes."

Um, you do realize that I was right, your quote even reinforces that notion. The weapon system in question hasn't been tested to the standard required by article 2, as testing is definitely a requirement for feasible precautions to be taken. And without it there's no realistic way of knowing at what point it becomes unreasonably dangerous.

What are you talking about? The weapon system HAS been tested, TFA points out it's "already been tested more than 11,000 times on around 700 volunteers." And there's nothing in article 2 requiring testing anyway. As much as you would like to apply common sense definitions to legal documents, it doesn't work. Furthermore, cataracts do not fall under the definition of "permanent blindness" in the protocol. Cataract surgery is a common outpatient procedure and can certainly restore one's sight to better than 20/200 corrected. Finally, as the previous poster was saying, even if there were some slight possibility of permanent blindness, that itself is not a war crime. Bullets can cause permanent blindness too, btw, as can mines, mortars, and almost anything on the battlefield, up to and including a blow on the head with a rock. If the worst thing a weapon has going for it is that it may, in some limited circumstances, cause cataracts, it would be one of the safest weapons ever devised.

So, in short, you're wrong. You have not demonstrated in any way that the use of this weapon could be classified as a war crime.

1. It was tested, under controlled conditions, by experienced engineers who only turned the thing on long enough to test it. What happens when you get some sadistic grunt on the trigger who just holds the fire button down?

2. Cataract surgery is out patient in areas with the tech and for people with the money for it. What about in some town in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the back waters of Louisiana, where they don't even have indoor plumbing?

The wavelength is completely irrelevant for the question if it is a laser. A laser does not have to be in the optical or IR range. A laser is defined as a spatially coherent, narrow, low-divergence beam of electromagnetic waves. (If it’s matter, it’s a maser. There can also be others.)

So a spatially coherent, narrow, low-divergence beam of microwaves, is indeed a laser.

It pre-dates the LASER, and is different in only one letter of the acronym LASER by the word "Light" rather than "Microwave". Researches seem to have thought it relevant to denote the difference between optical and non optical radiation so don't go screwing with the accepted definitions.

But the topic is moot really since this is nothing more than a microwave generator, based on the story shown on Discovery last year. Not everything coming out of a horn antenna is spatially coherent, so unless you can provide a source saying that this is indeed a spatially coherent beam created by stimulated emission of radiation, it is nether a LASER or a MASER.

Obviously, war crimes trials cannot be "conducted against" the winning side(in the classic Nuremberg sense of "war crimes trial") because "conducting a trial against" somebody requires that they be in your physical possession, or likely to be in the near future.

In that sense, it is practically a tautology that war crimes trials are never conducted against the winning side.

However, and this is important, all armies have internal codes of conduct and(unless they are really breaking down logistically, wh

In much the same way that soldiers have to shoot full metal jacket ball ammo, even in pistols, against enemy soldiers, whereas civilian cops carry hollowpoints, typically in rounds with much higher ballistic properties (.40s&w or.357Sig are comperable to.357 magnum, but in a shorter round. MUCH more powerful than 9mm). Basically, if a state trooper shoots you, you're less likely to survive than if a soldier shoots you.

Did you even think about what you typed before you hit 'submit'? State Police will put 9 rounds into you, maximum. Soldiers will put that many in a burst, and you might get a couple bursts.

If you take a single shot from a state policeman's sidearm, and a single shot from a soldier's sidearm, I would agree with you. But many soldiers are behind SAWs like the BAR, or are looking down the barrel of an M2.

I don't give a shit what the ammo is made of - if it's got some metal in it, and is coming at me at 4,

The argument here is similar to that of taser - that you would injure more people by not having this tool and having to disperse crowd in other ways (i.e. tear gas, water cannons, possible gunfire).

I agree with the crowd bit, but tasers are not used to disperse crowds, and tasers also do not reduce injury in a sense because they are situationally quite different. Here in Australia where they have only recently introduced tasers there are already talks of having them banned. When people get given a safe weapon they don't think twice before using it. A quick google search will show case after case of police tasing children. Would they have pulled out their guns and shot them?

Actually, there was a VERY good suggestion early on in several countries that have police force equipped with tasers, but that was shot down by the corporate lobbyists because it would reduce sales:

Every time police fires a taser, they would have to account for it in the EXACTLY SAME WAY AS IF THEY FIRED A FIREARM. Essentially making taser a proper "use only when there are no means other then firearm to diffuse the situation" kind of a tool, as it was marketed to the public, rather then the current "tase ju

The 870 local people in the crowd are dispersed by the cops and unhurt. Of the 130 bused-in 'anarchists' who remain to 'fight the pig' maybe 10-20% are hurt. Unfortunately, not hurt enough that they won't bus off to the next 'demo' the next week to break more windows and create gratuitous mayhem.

I know folks do love their non-lethal weapons these days but there's something to be said for busting some punk's scalp open with a nightstick and leaving him with knots on his head to remind him to not fuck with the man. Compare and contrast with tazing which leaves them caterwauling and screeching about their rights and lawsuits. Good old nightstick liberally applied to the noggin leaves them bleeding, dazed, confused and generally subdued.

Yeah. Police forces always are, always have been, and always will be, a model of conduct. They only hit with the force needed to violent people, non-violent demostrator or even by-stander who happen to be near are safe and won't be hit without provocation. Police brutality is an oxymoron.

The agressions from police officers caught in camera are just optical illusions.

Norway. And I think I can safely say that our police is different than the police in USA. They're normally not armed, and need a special permit to arm themselves. In some of the more violent areas they have guns in the car, but it's locked down, and they need a confirmation from HQ to be able to use them.

A cop being stabbed, or even hurt at all when on duty is fairly rare here, and tend to hit the top 5 news cases for the day. If someone dies on duty, it's several weeks of news about it, detailed investigat

Norway. And I think I can safely say that our police is different than the police in USA. They're normally not armed, and need a special permit to arm themselves. In some of the more violent areas they have guns in the car, but it's locked down, and they need a confirmation from HQ to be able to use them.

A cop being stabbed, or even hurt at all when on duty is fairly rare here, and tend to hit the top 5 news cases for the day. If someone dies on duty, it's several weeks of news about it, detailed investi

They will just redefine "injuries" to a meaning around or beyond causing permanent damage to vital organs by intentional misuse.
Terms like "pre-existing medical conditions" in the press can also get that number down even if your family has a forensic pathologist.

They will just redefine "injuries" to a meaning around or beyond causing permanent damage to vital organs by intentional misuse.
Terms like "pre-existing medical conditions" in the press can also get that number down even if your family has a forensic pathologist.

So instead of Taser's "excited delirium," we will have a lot of "Islamic glaucoma"?

I just love it. Once, a long long time ago, people were upset that the army uses lethal weapons to disperse unarmed crowds in conflict areas. So the army sits down to develop non-lethal weapons - they cost more than guns, they are usually harder to operate (sorry, no citation) and place the soldiers in more danger (you are safer if you just shoot the opponent).What happens? Is everyone happy that the army is trying to lower the death counts in those conflict areas? No, people complain: "This is not safe", "

I would take a few microwaves over a bullet anytime... trouble is that if I go to protest a corrupt or insane government it is very improbable (Western Europe) that I will be met with bullets (at most anti-riot gear, and haven't seen it in use in my life).

In the other hand, police would have less restraints to use this weapon even if it blinds 1 in 1000 people (they usually excuse police brutality on demostrators and even bystanders unless they get filmed on camera, and even then). Side effects will be igno

Rather than high-tech indiscriminate non-lethal weapons, the US should invest much more in intelligence gathering and infiltration. Which is difficult, but just because slapping a shiny new weapon into the battlefield is easier, doesn't mean it's better.

Shiny new weapons have the distinct advantage that the guys holding the purse can look at and touch what they have paid for once it has been built. It is usually much harder to raise funds for "soft" work, I guess both for the psychological reason that it's not as easy to put a mental value into something that is abstract, but also for the very practical reason that it's harder for the buyers to verify that they actually got what they were promised.

An investment in intel won't necessarily stop riots, especially riots calculated to provoke violent retaliation without regard to own-side casualties. Less-lethal weapons won't produce bloody martyr cell phone footage.:) Smart opponents want martyrs, especially when the martyrs aren't their own operative and are just expendable locals they may not care for anyway or actively dislike.

Intel isn't something you can (always) buy. though that IS a good idea if done carefully.

While I agree with most of your points (good post), I am personally of the opinion that good intelligence would ALSO impede those kinds of riots you talk about, if not immediately then in the long run, by eliminating the ringleaders of the Taliban, which would incite those riots. Using the microwave weapon to quell the riots, even though non-lethal, will cause resentment as much as a few dead rioters would. Totally IMHO.

The cops or soldiers that use them will work out how to make the weapon have far worse effects than were intended.They *always* do.
For example, trapping fleeing civilians against a wall or fence so that they can't esape, or more than one beam focussed on one person. (Incidentally, one technique with plastic bullets or baton rounds is to ricochet them off the street, so that they shatter and rebound up into the victims face)Like tasers, they say that they're a 'non-lethal' alternative to guns, but in reality they still use guns the same as they always did, but now use tasers when they would just have grabbed someone & handcuffed them, or just spoke to them.

As a soldier, I have to say that making the thing do more damage was the last thing that came to mind. We have plenty of things that do shit-tons of damage already. But when we catch an 8 year old running command wire to an IED, you kind of wish there was a way to stop him without ripping him in half with a.50 cal round. Something like this might be nice from time to time.

I don't really know anything about microwave physics...or any kind of wave physics, but would holding a metal sheet in front of you (either flat or curved) be effective in dispersing the energy directed towards the crowd/enemy, or maybe even direct it back towards the operator of the device?

The abbreviation, which could mean any number of things, is telling of the military habit to name destructive, harmful things with innocuous sounding phrases that do not imply damage "Active Denial System" could just as easily have been a web term or a feature of an antivirus program. Imagine a TV ad: "Norton's Active-Denial-System or ADS is proven to..." This is shared by government which will often use formal, even flowery language to cover up a practice which is morally or ethically contentious:

For instance, a military spokeman or officer or a high-up politician cannot very well come out and say this without coming off badly from it: "We believe that as we kill off our opponents in the Taliban a number of civilian casualties are necessary to allow our victory."

Therefore you get pretentious, padded-out diction like this: "We concede that the Taliban are a formidable foe who possess a humanitarian record that we can only describe as deplorable. However if we are to restore and preserve the freedoms of the Afghan people, and we think you'd agree with us on this, that a certain number of hazards for those present in the field are bound up in these transitional times are justified in the context of the achievement of the coalition's greater goals: We're in the sphere of granting those formerly under oppression a life of liberty, free of oppression and terrorism."

This sort of puffed out prose is a long-time euphemism which has only proliferated over the 100 and more years - masses of Latin words lengthen a point, and those who do listen can't be bothered digging out the true meaning which was basically that civilian deaths can't be avoided and are actually needed for the coalition to win. The end justifies the means. But in our hypothetical wording up there this was disguised: The great enemy of clear writing is insincerity. A well-known author named George Orwell wrote much on this and his essays are recommended.

Ever felt one of those sensory illusion devices that has a stack of parallel tubes with alternating hot and cold lines? The hot lines are not enough to burn you, but when you put your skin across the stack, your heat sensing system interprets the feeling as intense burning. Closest thing I ever felt to the black box.

Actually, I think this weapon, oh sorry, device might have a frightening psychological effect on folk who can't really comprehend what the thing is doing. They know about guns that shoot bullets. But this thing didn't shoot anything, but they're suddenly feeling uncomfortably hot.

"Yo, they're using black magic! Is that allowed by the Geneva Conventions?"

Remember, when the first US troops arrived in Afghanistan, the Afghanis thought that mirrored sunglasses had X-ray vision, so that the soldiers could peep at their wives. Even if the local Taliban leader has a microwave oven at home and tries to explain:

"Do no worry! It is harmless! It is just like my microwave oven here . . . oh, um . . . "

Just like tasers, this will give nincompoops of military the freedom to hurt civilians and innocent people on the grounds that it won't 'harm' or 'kill' them.
It just gives them more incentive to be trigger happy against the civilians because the aggressors (read: military or police personnel) won't fear consequences of being court martialed for murder and there will be less public outcry against 'harmless' methods of crowd control.

This is just an alternative to the golden military rule: "Double check your fucking target", turning it into "Shoot your fucking target, if it happens to be the wrong one, just apologize".

Great, now high school dropouts can test it against all sorts of wheel-chair ridden Afghani people, they can also use it against veiled Afghani women so they can see how fast the veil burns.
Yes, I'm not kidding, you all know the fools of military will be having some fun with it against innocent people under the excuse of crowd control, where a crowd might be less than 20 people lining up for bread.

Soldiers may not be a "gang of murderers" but they are trained killers who are conditioned to follow orders without question and kill without thinking when ordered to do so.

And I would also point out that recent History is filled with cases where military units did act like a "gang of murderers" in regard to unarmed civilians. Kent State [wikipedia.org] and Me Lie [wikipedia.org] to name a couple off the top of my head.

Also, in case 1 of your example by knowingly firing on unarmed civilians it would be considered a war crime.

I prefer case 3: our politicians don't put the world's best killing force in a position where killing people is not appropriate.

Our army is not trained in non-violence; they are trained to kill people and blow shit up. When killing people and blowing shit up is not on the menu, then they should not be involved in the situation.

Once we begin your scenario, where our military is facing down a bunch of civilian protesters, everyone has already lost. It should be police forces facing them down, because that is police-work. It doesn't matter if we have an ADS or a magical calm-the-fuck-down ray - our military should not be involved in the situation at all.

The US Army, and all other major armies, are designed to do one thing: destroy other armies. In a word, to kill. The American military is the best in the world at fighting other armies. They blew through the Iraqi army in literally hours. They haven't lost in a fair fight since Korea.

If the US wanted to, they could just let their military do their thing, and completely annihilate every country they're fighting in. They wouldn't even need nukes, just let the tanks roll and shoot

How about this: The military deserves what it gets when it goes to places where it isn't welcome (Afghanistan and Iraq) and so the civilians have every fucking right to protest day and night, and your military trying to disperse the civilians (in their own country) is just more violations to add to the invasion of the civilians' land.

The preferred thing would be for the military to respect its advertised principles and leave the protesters alone. Have to disperse th

Every military has a history of war crimes. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Any other military would have the same problems. Your ignorant, if "trendy", anti-Americanism just doesn't let you see that. Seriously, the last time SECDEF was a "Richard" was 1993. Richard "Dick" Cheney was Vice President under Bush Jr., a post now filled by Joseph Biden.

Were the incidents you referred to tragic? Yes. But look at the bigger picture. A handful of tragedies amongst an entire occupied country does not invalidate the entire syste

The Kolokol-1 article states "129 hostages died during the ensuing raid; nearly all of these fatalities were attributed to the effects of the aerosolised incapacitating agent". I'd rather be blind than dead, thank you very much.

The Agent 15 one is also debatable. Sure, it's quite safe on it's own, but it looks like a very poor choice for using on antagonistic forces. Many of the listed symptoms (from the exact article you linked" actually make it more likely that vi

Given misuse of this or a dozen men with fully automatic weapons, this will cause injuries. Bullets through your brainpan tend to cause death.

Are you really arguing that we need to worry about an injury rate of 0.3% or 3% or 30%, when the alternative is death? Because that sort of idiocy is what I was pointing out as a very poor rationale for holding back use on this weapon.

This is a weapon used by SOLDIERS for crowd control. They are currently using automa

The "safer" a weapon is, the less the restrictions and controls over it's use, and the more often it is used.

As we have seen with tasers, people begin to see them as a tool which achieves their objective with minimal repercussions. There follows a normalisation process resulting in usage becoming considered appropriate even in situations where other forms of violence would be considered unacceptable. Like when trying to stop a student making a scene as he is leaving the premises as requested. Tasers were touted as a less violent option to bullets, instead they seem to be used as a more violent option to wrestling (and, if you go by Youtube, talking).

Even if the technology is 100% safe and cannot result in permanent injury, it is still the exercise of pain and violence in controlling civilians and must be very tightly controlled. Instead there seems to be very little interest in the misapplication of violence by officials if nobody dies.

Seriously, making people feel like they are on fire in order to "disperse crowds"?

Where people might be hesitant to use lethal force due to the consequences, I suspect that they'll be all to willing to use "non-lethal" weapons as soon as things start to look remotely ugly. Or possibly for no reason at all. It's a lot harder to prove that an incident occurred if it doesn't leave bodies behind. Of course, they'll know their actions are wrong and will attempt to make it illegal to record incidents where the weapon is used, much as police departments are trying to prevent recordings of officers now so that there will be no documented proof of police brutality.

Yep. I'm sure feeling a bit of heat is really going to work on a Taliban fellow who grew up in a desert. When guys like that are picking a fight, there are two things they understand: dead and not dead. If not dead, keep fighting.

While such a device is too expensive to replace every instance of goons with blunt objects, it(or its scaled down for trade-show demonstrations counterpart), is a virtually perfect torture device, and people are frankly right to worry.

By all accounts, being hit with it feels like being on fire, except without leaving a mark(and without killing nerves, so the pain isn't self-limiting). The theory is that, if using it on a crowd or people approaching something sensitive, it will be a self-limiting deterren

But still it surely better than the current mandate the soldier in afganistan have. Their main weapon now are bullits and heavier variant, and it is no suprise that a lot of people are killed because of this. Some might be civiliians (it is not a traditional war after all). If you point a automatic weapon at a crowd, the odds that you hurt lots of people is much higher.

A better solution would be that the US invasion force would have to keep to law

Anything can be used for torture. What matters is the character of individuals. You don't take away screwdrivers because they *could* be used for torture.

Quite true. However, inventing devices specifically to inflict pain, is something very different from misusing a general purpose device to this end. The whole mentality of painful non-lethal weapons should be questioned: e.g., one could disable people with foam, or by throwing a net over them etc..., which is painless, or one could disable people with pa